Get it right with practical, sustainable masterplans

THE town planning profession in Zimbabwe is now getting together to start work on the network of 92 master plans demanded by President Mnangagwa by the middle of this year, so that at least there will be an outline of how the very rapid development in the Second Republic can be directed.

Some areas do not have much in the way, if anything, of a master plan, and others such as the Harare metropolitan area have grossly outdated master plans that have been totally ignored for the past three decades and are simply a record of a dream of another time, rather than reflect the starting point on the ground today.

While the number of qualified planners, and the build up of the profession, has been good in recent years, so at least the technical back-up is now available, the professional planners are in many ways the advisors and the guides of the planning process.

Zimbabwe’s planning laws are remarkably democratic, with those living with the plans having a major say in how the plans need to be drawn up, and the planners presenting options and ideas, as well as imposing obvious limits like banning building on wetlands, rather than imposing textbook solutions.

So the local authorities need to complement the work of their planners, or planner in some councils, with a committee of the council, which represents the residents and their business in the area, as well as inviting opinions from the people who will have to make the plans work. A plan that everyone ignores is not much use, so there has to be buy in.

A masterplan is not a detailed plan. It is more of the outline, laying down the principles of how a area can be developed, marking the axes of development and noting the extra infrastructure that will be required, and in some cases working out how the masterplan of one authority will mesh with the masterplan of the neighbouring authority or authorities.

Bits do have to fit together as our towns and districts are not islands, but rather pieces in the jigsaw that makes up the whole of Zimbabwe.

To take a specific example, the huge urban sprawl and mess that now makes up greater Harare, a conurbation of four urban councils that form a continuous belt of concrete and buildings, and which has already extended into the four surrounding rural district councils with new suburbs, planned and unplanned, and again part of the continuous belt of masonry.

Fairly obviously the planners or chief planners of the eight councils have to meet at some stage soon and at least be able to work out where they all are right now, since planners have to start with what is there rather than what they want or what would have been ideal if proper plans had been drafted and enforced in the past.

They need to agree on a number of principles, starting with the fact that the Harare conurbation cannot just continue expanding in all directions, chewing up ever more farmland and creating ever widening ripples of pollution.

Already the concept of far denser development has been accepted by the central Government, and this needs to be reflected in the master plans.

High densities have a reputation in Zimbabwe of being low income housing, but already this is false with some of the more modern development we have been seeing of luxury flats and cluster housing, plus middle income apartment blocks.

But the sort of solid upper income and middle income double-story terraced housing seen in many European cities are strangely lacking, with this insistence that development on each plot must be detached from the neighbouring plot, except in the commercial city centres where buildings can touch each other.

That needs to be extended to residential areas.

We have been filling in our public open spaces as fast as we can, and destroying wetlands although that just causes flooding. Oddly enough preservation of wetlands also creates the open spaces, since a conserved wetland will not be built on.

We also, obviously, need more gaps between the towns and cities and preferably between suburbs as well. Often these will be a river or a decent stream and proper demarcation of stream banks and flood plains can create natural gaps, so we do not have the continuous line of cement stretching for kilometre after kilometre.

In a fair number of cases inadequate space has been left for schools, although most planners reckon 10 percent of residential land should be education preserves if proper additional sporting and other facilities are to be included.

This used to be a law in Zimbabwe so developers were forced to cede the land for schooling. Modern developers have often skimped here, and the land barons obviously never cared. Now planners have to claw some of the remaining open space back so schools can be built.

It is likely, in the metropolitan region, that we may have to set the required higher densities as a matter of regulation, so that we do not get large plots with modest houses as was the norm in middle colonial times. This just uses up too much land.

As can be seen it should be possible to get the basic outline of even a complex planning area like metropolitan Harare sorted out in the six months, starting with what is there, marking down the rivers and wetlands and demarcating the open spaces that must be kept, and then marking on where heavy industry is and can be extended and then marking in the general residential and smaller business sections.

The masterplan would also need to take into account infrastructure. This would be the major water trunk mains from the present and planned dams, the major trunk sewage lines and the extension of the treatment works to all seven river systems in Harare metropolitan, since sewage does not flow uphill, and it is an excellent idea to have the treatment works not too close to where people live and work.

The major highway system needs to be at least sketched out, so the road reserves for arterial and ring roads are reserved and kept clear of developers, and even space left for bus terminuses and future commuter railways and railway stations.

This will leave large blocks of land under development or reserved for development, plus sets of rules that outline how the development needs to take place.

The masterplan does not deal with each block, that comes with the local plans with all their detail, the marking out of stand boundaries, the physical location of sites for schools and hospitals and other public needs, where shopping centres can be built and all the nitty gritty.

But at least with a functional master plan everyone will know where the development blocks are, and landowners, residents, developers, the local authority and others can then sit down and follow the laid down processes to plan each development block, according to the parameters laid out in the master plan.

And finally, this time, the masterplan must be a living document, revised every year if need be to take into account new needs, and avoid new dangers. The mess Harare metropolitan is in arises from a plan that was never grown, and so everyone just ignored it.